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Europe's answer to GPS irks Pentagon

A NEW space race kicked off last week as the European Space Agency finally decided to press ahead with its controversial plan to launch a network of navigation satellites to rival America’s Global Positioning System.

Unlike the military-run GPS, Europe’s Galileo system will be a civil venture, funded by the member states of the European Union and the European Space Agency (ESA). The system’s designers claim that by 2008, when 30 Galileo satellites are expected to be in orbit, Galileo will provide more accurate and more reliable navigational information than GPS.